This disclosure is generally in the field of methods and systems for treating bladder pain and irritative voiding symptoms, particularly but not limited to systems and methods using the local, intravesical administration of drug, such as lidocaine, into the bladder, and more particularly to methods and systems for a sustained treatment effect.
Interstitial cystitis (IC) is a urological condition characterized by pain, increased urinary frequency, and urgency. This condition may also involve varying degrees of urinary incontinence and sexual dysfunction. IC and Painful Bladder Syndrome (PBS) include patients with urinary pain not attributable to other causes, such as infection or urinary stones, and are estimated to affect approximately 3 to 8 million people in the U.S. alone, the majority of whom are women (Berry 2009). IC is a serious condition with unmet medical needs.
There is also a need to treat to treat bladder pain and irritative voiding symptoms in non-IC patients. Examples of such non-IC patients include patients with ureteral stents or with painful bladder conditions.
Current treatments for bladder pain include oral medications, such as antimuscarinics, alpha blockers, tricyclics antidepressents, SSRIs, Elmiron, and gabapentin. These drugs may not be effective for some patients. In addition, these oral drugs are delivered systemically, which may cause unwanted side effects and may not achieve therapeutically effective levels in the bladder when at acceptable plasma levels.
Another current treatment includes instillation of a drug (e.g., lidocaine) solution directly into the bladder. Other instillations, such as dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), antimuscarinics, heparin, are also known. Another available procedure is hydrodistention. None of these treatments have been shown to be widely effective or to provide a sustained therapeutic benefit.
A number of studies of instillation procedures with lidocaine have been performed in recent years. Nickel et al., BJU International, 103:910-918 (2008) discloses a study in which patients with IC and PBS were studied in a randomized, placebo controlled, double blind fashion, evaluating the effect of 5 daily instillations of an alkalinized solution of lidocaine (200 mg) on efficacy measures of bladder pain and irritative voiding symptoms on Day 8 (three days after completion of treatment) and Day 15 (ten days after completion of treatment.) One efficacy measure that showed improvement at Day 8 (the Interstitial Cystitis Symptom Index or ICSI) did not show sustained improvement at Day 15. Other efficacy measures (bladder pain, urgency, voiding frequency) never showed improvement following treatment when measured either at Day 8 and Day 15 (bladder pain) or only at Day 15 (urgency, voiding frequency). One efficacy measure called the Interstitial Cystitis Problem Index (ICPI) showed improvement both at Day 8 and Day 15, but the effect at Day 15 had diminished somewhat. These findings suggest that instillations of lidocaine into the bladder, even when administered on an aggressive schedule of daily instillation, were not able to show a sustained treatment effect out to 10 days following treatment.
Parsons, Urology 65(1):45-48 (2005) discloses a study in which patients with IC were treated with instillations of alkalinized lidocaine and heparin into the bladder as a single one hour treatment, then followed for 48 hours to assess duration of effect. The paper describes that 94% of patients had relief at 20 minutes following instillation, 50% at 4 hours and 3 of 28 patients (FIG. 1) or ˜10% at 48 hours, suggesting a waning of effect over time. Additionally, a set of patients who received three instillations a week for two weeks were assessed at 48 hours following last treatment for durability of effect; 80% reported relief of symptoms; no further follow-up is provided. These findings suggest that the durability of treatment effect for a single lidocaine instillation is approximately 10% at 48 hours.
Henry, et al., J Urology 165:1900-03 (2001) discloses a study in which lidocaine instillations were used in both healthy volunteers (for pharmacokinetic purposes) and IC patients. Pain assessments following a single lidocaine instillation showed duration of effect to be approximately 24 hours: the mean pain score prior to treatment was 6.0. Immediately following treatment this decreased to 1.8. The next day, mean pain had increased up to 3.7. This was again reduced to 1.2 with a second instillation. These results support those seen in the Parsons and Nickel publications, suggesting that the duration of treatment effect with intravesical solutions of lidocaine are 24 to 48 hours.
It would be desirable to provide improved methods for treating patients suffering from bladder pain and irritative voiding symptoms. In particular, it would be desirable to provide a means for providing a sustained treatment effect for several days or weeks or more beyond the active treatment period.